


a friend of fifty-nine days/the sixtieth night

by moonbeatblues



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: F/F, and seriously do listen to those reeder tracks they kill me, but anyway, i want to write more about those 59 days, they're the person who wrote julia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-06
Updated: 2019-12-06
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:29:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21692272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonbeatblues/pseuds/moonbeatblues
Summary: The Hand opens his fist and in it is one of the flowers, larger and plucked in its entirety. His mouths are quiet, just hanging slack and open, and the silence between them is so strange— a conversation when words seem so incredibly distant, so insufficient, so inappropriate.
Relationships: Beauregard Lionett/Yasha, Jester Lavorre/Beauregard Lionett, Jester Lavorre/Beauregard Lionett/Yasha, Jester Lavorre/Yasha, Obann & Yasha (Critical Role), The Laughing Hand & Yasha
Comments: 5
Kudos: 116





	a friend of fifty-nine days/the sixtieth night

**Author's Note:**

> i've started listening to the tracks reeder (soundcloud) did about taz while writing, and i highly recommend bc it! hurts!

There were moments.

There always are.

—

The Hand liked to summon his dogs when they camped for the night— not that they camped often.

“I don’t get it,” Obann said one evening, watching him throw bits of dried meat to them and sidled up to Yasha like an old friend. Like Molly would. “They just dissipate as soon as he falls asleep.”

She says nothing. Not that she thinks he’d stop her— more than anything, she thinks, he wishes they _were_ old friends. That one day he’ll drop the charm and she’ll do anything other than rip his head from his body.

She closes her eyes for a moment instead, and thinks of Molly, imagines herself like those dolls that fit inside each other and getting smaller and smaller within her body. There’s warmth like a dying ember, thinking about the circus, and she curls around it.

Mornings on the road, waking up to Molly braiding loose strands of her hair. Rehearsals in open fields, watching from the cart. Sleeping in a pile in the belly of the cart, Molly pressed against her back. Sneaking bits of fruit to the horses.

A few of the Hand’s mouths laugh different, a sudden, sharper sound, when he’s out of meat and the dogs lick at his empty hand.

“A softie, under all that,” Obann says, and she imagines the lean against her shoulder as Molly, pressed into her side to watch the sunset from the back of the cart.

—

It’s strange, the plant life in Xhorhas.

On the edge of the Lotus Den there are these strange little flowers just blooming, white and pink and delicate, opening on the surface of the water. Petals cling to her boots as they walk, dry on with the mud.

It’s a looser day, she can feel it. Obann’s distracted, confused, and the Hand ambles a little less stiffly. Her fingertips tingle, enough to idly form and un-form fists— she does, over and over until her knuckles ache, dizzy on such a tiny freedom.

There’s a tap on her shoulder— heavy, still, but restrained.

She turns, feels the limits of the spell tugging at her limbs. _We need to keep moving._

The Hand opens his fist and in it is one of the flowers, larger and plucked in its entirety. His mouths are quiet, just hanging slack and open, and the silence between them is so strange— a conversation when words seem so incredibly distant, so insufficient, so inappropriate.

She reaches for her book, kept to her chest under her furs, and it’s starting to hurt, straining against the charm this long. With a shaky hand, she takes the flower and places it between two pages, shoving the book back and gritting her teeth.

From up ahead, she can hear Obann start to double back.

“Friends, what seems to be the holdup?”

He doesn’t see the book, doesn’t know she’s got it. During the nights, she can feel it burning against her rib cage and falls asleep to it.

He takes Yasha’s hand. “Come, my dear, we have work to do.” The Hand’s mouths resume their strange chorus, one and then another, like lighting a house one lamp at a time.

—

She puts the strips of cloak on the same page, rearranges the curious little menagerie and wonders what happened to his dogs.

A little ways back, Jester heals Beau as she dangles from ape-Caleb’s arms. Dazed, still, wiping blood from the corner of her mouth, Beau looks across the cathedral at her. Jester follows her gaze after a moment, both of them wide-eyed and wobbly.

She closes her book in one hand— the snap has gone completely out of the spine, it’s just soft leather— and smiles. It’s a raw and watery thing, and it feels strange on her face after so long, but the second, when they all gather again near the door, comes easier.

* * *

They pile messily in one of the cottage bedrooms— beds shoved together, everyone sitting on the floor across from where Caleb’s drawn most of a teleportation circle.

Caleb, for his part, is out cold on one of the beds, wrapped around Nott and Frumpkin.

“Like a peach around its pit,” Caduceus had said, earlier, reaching down to let Frumpkin nose at his fingers.

“Trent called him Bren,” Nott said, and said again. Over and over that night, eyes moon-wide. “He called him _Bren_.”

She’s asleep too, now, curled the other direction so they look like mismatched parentheses, Frumpkin sandwiched between.

—

It’d be nice to say Beau wakes up and feels that Yasha’s gone, Jester’d tell it like that, but she just sees her silhouette in the kitchen on the way back from the bathroom, freezing on a yawn with one hand caught in her hair.

“Uh. Hey,” and she realizes she fucked up, because Yasha starts like she hadn’t heard her. She could’ve just gone back to the room, waited to talk there or, better yet, pretended to be asleep.

“Hey.”

They stand in the dark and the silence for a moment before Yasha clears her throat. “Do you want tea? I was just making some.”

She doesn’t, really.

“Sure.”

They drink in the room, on the floor in the makeshift nest— “No one leaves the dome,” Caleb had said, gaze flat and feverish. “Not for longer than a few minutes. Please.”

“I’m glad you’re back.” Beau doesn’t look up. “I mean, I know you _know_ , but sometimes it’s like people never just say what they want to, you know? I’m glad we got you back.”

They’ve always been paralyzingly awkward, but Beau feels the distinct absence of pretense, now— she reaches with one hand out along the wooden floor, and Yasha covers it with hers.

”Thank you.”

—

Jester opens one eye when Beau takes the empty mugs out, nudges her tail at Yasha's clasped hands.

“I’m glad you’re back, too. Can I hug you?”

Jester’s hugged her the most of anyone— that is to say, Jester’s hugged her before— and it’s nice, she doesn’t feel afraid of crushing her. Even Beau she’s scared of hurting, for good reason, but Jester’s strong— she winds her arms around Yasha’s middle and just presses her cheek to Yasha’s collarbone and she’s solid and warm.

“I missed you,” she says into Jester’s hair, and she knows Jester knows, knows Jester watched her cry over and over again during those weeks, but it’s nice to say it all the same, like Beau had said. “I think I missed you the most.”

—

“Oh,” Beau says, and sits down. Lets herself be pulled in. “Okay.”

**Author's Note:**

> come say hello @seafleece on tumblr! i will gladly take some beauyashter prompts to keep me sane during finals


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